posted at 8:46 pm on April 30, 2012 by Allahpundit

To cleanse the palate, via the Onion, a solid goof on presidential vetting in the age of social media. In reality, the fact that nearly everyone will leave an indelible digital trail online means cultural standards about candidates’ behavior will relax a bit, just as they’ve relaxed somewhat when it comes to drug use. And of course, after the first major candidate or two in the future runs into serious political headaches because of something they posted years before, the hyperambitious leaders of tomorrow will change their behavior accordingly and be much more circumspect than their peers about what shows up on their Facebook wall or in their Twitter retweet files. I’m sure that’s already true to some extent, in fact. If you looked systematically at, say, the personal social media accounts of officers in the Young Democrats and Young Republicans at campuses across the country, I bet they’d be markedly more reserved on average than their classmates’. The media prefer its candidates wholesome to an almost robotic degree, darn it — unless of course they’re a Republican running against a Democratic incumbent, in which case they prefer their candidates to be “cool.”